(CIVIL WAR MISSOURI) J Tilden Moulton Two civilian letters

Sale 2615 - Lot 94

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Estimate: $ 800 - $ 1,200

(CIVIL WAR--MISSOURI.) J. Tilden Moulton. Two civilian letters on the violence of war-era Missouri, and three written as a soldier. 5 Autograph Letters Signed "Tilden" to his sister Caroline Moulton. Each 3 or 4 pages, most 4to-sized; mailing folds, minimal wear. Various places, 1861-1862

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Jotham Tilden Moulton III (1836-1909) was a Maine native who relocated with his parents to Chicago in adolescence. His father was a lawyer, edited the Chicago Tribune, and was said to be a personal friend of Abraham Lincoln. Young Moulton, judging by these letters, was at the outset of the Civil War a lukewarm Unionist at best.

Moulton was a civilian when he wrote the first two letters offered here. In 1861 he sought a position as a school teacher, and removed to Farmington, Missouri, south of St. Louis, which like much of the state was in a state of simmering violence between secessionists and Unionists. As a northerner who tried to remain outside of politics, he came under suspicion from both sides. On 5 August 1861 he wrote: "The people here were almost unanimous for the Union a few months ago, but now they are almost unanimous for the Southern Confederacy. . . . One evening, a party of men, wishing to get a free dram, stopped and represented themselves as Federal soldiers. The Englishman treated them, and lent his horse to one who was on foot. They thanked him warmly, gave three rousing cheers for Jeff Davis, and rode off." Tilden added "I certainly shall not violate my oath, though my sympathies are all Southern."

Later that month on 31 August, he wrote again from the "Independent Republic of Missouri": "Horse stealing is so common as hardly to be thought a crime. The practise of wearing arms is almost universal. I slept one night in a house where three or four secessionists locked the doors and lay down with pistols under their pillows and guns leaning against their beds." He became increasingly leery of the extremism of the secessionists: "An Englishman undertook to get up a home guard in this vicinity. The citizens pulled down his flag and tore it to pieces. A few days afterwards he was taken out of his house and shot." One of the killers was a former student of Moulton's: "He speaks with perfect coolness of putting prisoners to death in cold blood."

Moulton soon felt compelled to choose a side, and enlisted in September 1861 with the 33rd Illinois Infantry, which had so many educators it was informally known as the Teachers' Regiment. He was not much of an asset to the Union cause, however. The three soldier letters in this lot, dated January through November 1862, were all written from various hospitals. On 26 October he wrote: "A year's service has abated my ardor, as well as shattered my constitution."